KHAIRPUR/SUKKUR: Fifty-seven people, 17 women and 19 children among them, were killed when a Karachi-bound bus collided head-on with a coal-laden truck near the Therhi bypass on Gambhir Road a little before dawn on Tuesday.

Twenty-five people were injured, many of them seriously, in the crash. The bus driver was among the dead.

Residents of nearby villages and some of the injured told reporters and police that the speeding vehicles collided with a bang, which was heard miles away.

A large number of victims died on the spot and the screams of the injured attracted people to the accident site.

The villagers and some travellers took some of the injured to nearby health facilities.

The truck driver and some other seriously injured people were rushed to the Khairpur Civil Hospital. All 57 bodies were kept at the same hospital.

The bus was coming from Swat and most of the passengers reportedly hailed from Bahrain.

According to some injured people, the bus was overloaded and many passengers were travelling on the roof. They said the collision was so powerful that it blew away the roof of the bus.

Many of the victims were taken out from the wreckage by prising open the body of the bus with gas cutters.

An injured man told newsmen that he and six other members of his family were travelling in the bus and he was the lone survivor.

An official report released late in the evening said that the bus was carrying 77 passengers, a driver and a conductor. It said that 57 of them died and 22 were under treatment at the Khairpur Civil Hospital. The condition of 13 injured people was stated to be serious and two of them were referred to a Karachi hospital, it added.

Meanwhile, a C-130 plane sent to Sukkur in the afternoon transported 46 bodies to Risalpur.

According to an ISPR release, the bodies would be sent to the hometowns of victims by ambulances. Eleven bodies were dispatched to various destinations by Edhi air ambulances.

Officials at the hospital said that some of the dead and the injured were yet to be identified.

Some of the deceased were identified as Subhan, Zulfi Khan, Siraj Khan, Khan Bahadur, Mohammed Ishaq, Mohammed Sami, Mohammed Zada, Mukhtiar Ahmed, Dil Mohammed, Mohammed Ibrahim, Ghulam Mustafa, Noor Mohammed, Raziq Khan, Mohammed Iqbal, Mohammed Aziz, Hyder Khan, Noor Ellahi, Mohammed Yaseen, Dil Zad Khan, Mohammad Sajid, Fehmida Begum, Gul Shireen, Sanobar, Sohnia, Bushra, Aisha, Sadaf, Zahida, Shazia, Shaista, Bakhtawar, Saba, Sabira, Sumera, Rehana, Naila, Badree Begum, Humera Khatoon, Sultana Zeba, Shumaila, Manzooran, Nusrat, Munawwar, Rabia and Naheed Ara.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2014